Sunday, August 26, 2012

You Never Shoulda Opened That Door: PSS1 & SOE

EQ2Wire has a typically excellent account of the latest development in the PSS1 saga. In the light of the many issues that have arisen during and since the transition of DCUO from SOE's stewardship to our putative PSS1 overlords, the conversion of EQ2, which was due around about now, has been postponed.

In the comments thread Seffrid, who's been highly active on the forums on this issue, has about the best summation of the situation that I've seen. I reproduce his comment and my reply here:

Seffrid August 26, 2012 @ 2:47 am

As I commented on the EQ2 board, and
Brasse was kind enough to acknowledge the validity of the point, there’s
very little benefit in PSS1 going to an event in America in order to
address the concerns of the affected players who by definition under
this deal live in Europe!I’ve no doubt that the EQ2 transition has been delayed because SOE
have concerns over some of the problems they encountered in the DCUO
transition, not because there are unresolved concerns that the players
have. I haven’t seen any commitment not to make the transition until the
players’ concerns have been fully resolved and I doubt they ever will
be.Players want choice. They want the new players who PSS1 recruit to
have to sign up with them while existing players have the choice whether
to do so or to stay with SOE until they can see that PSS1 are an equal
company to SOE to hold an account with. If the companies truly believe
they can in time bring those players on side then it must be better to
keep them with SOE in the meantime rather than lose them to the
company’s games now and for all time, which is how it’s looking for a
lot of long-term players at the moment.Recruiting a lot of new F2P players taking a non-committal look at
the game is naturally a good thing, but so too is hanging onto a lot of
established players who have for the most part subscribed to the games
over many years thereby demonstrating a long-term commitment to them.
That’s what SOE don’t seem to be able to get a grasp of at the moment.

bhagpuss August 26, 2012 @ 3:30 am

Seconded. And a fine summation of where we are now and where we should be going, Seffrid. I am not rabidly anti-PSS1. I already have a PSS1 account, or rather I
have an Allaplaya account. When I can fit in a session or two I play
one of their games, Argo. It’s an enjoyable F2P title. That does not mean I want to give up more than a dozen years of
history with SoE. Much less does it mean I’m happy to be sold on like a
bad debt.A deal whereby PSS1 marketed SOE games in their territory and signed
up all the new members that marketing brought them to their own
financial benefit would not just have been accepted by the UK/EU
players, it would almost certainly have been welcomed. This could have
been a PR triumph instead of a PR disaster.If any of these decisions really are within the remit of SOE,
something I have always doubted, it’s still not too late to do this
right. I suspect, however, that all meaningful decision-making on this
takes place somewhere above Smed’s pay-grade and at that level we really
are all just numbers.

And now I'm off to play GW2 (assuming the servers are up). SOE have a lot of competition on their hands right now. My issue is more likely to be when I get time time to play their MMOs in future. They really don't need to be putting barriers in the way of me giving them my time or my money, now do they?